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Emily and I just spent a much-needed weekend together. She's moving to Palo Alto soon for a chaplaincy program at Stanford, so sleeping in her little studio on Capitol Hill together seemed especially sweet. She doesn't know what will happen after next year, and it's hard to imagine not being a short road trip away.

We always talk about the fact that we're connected on the Spirit Highway, and we trust that. 1,000 miles won't change it. AND there's something precious about the face-to-face, rambling, start-and-stop conversations that proximity affords.

I could write a book about our friendship (and maybe someday I will), but in my Lenten theme of Yes's and No's, Emily and our soul friendship is one of the great Yes's of my life. The poet Elizabeth Alexander says, "Poetry.../is the human voice/and are we not of interest to each other?" Emily and I are blessed with an endless fascination of one another, an endless interest in what's stirring in the deepest places. Among the topics covered in the last 30 hours:

The Divine Feminine

Christian Wiman and his line, "And I said to my soul, be loud."

Rob Bell (of course)

The Enneagram (with countless bullet points underneath this favorite heading--negative emotions, the 3 centers of intelligence, how the arrows get more attention than the wings)

Work, calling, and vocation

How church can bury the soul

Knowing when to move on

Writing

Death and dying

Krista Tippett and how we love her and think she talks too much (A favorite subject of mine)

Generational wounds and healing

Paul Ryan's powerpoint and the way he's conveniently forgotten that insurance is, by its definition, a risk pool